Bill Gates On Linux

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday July 1, 2003 @04:19AM from the stuff-to-read dept.

King-of-darkness writes "USA Today had an interview with Bill Gates on june the 30th. Gates seems to be considering Linux as a passing thru competition just like OS/2., and That Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies."

8 of 1,194 comments (clear)

Oh, for Christ's sake by 2names · 2003-07-01 04:25 · Score: 0, Troll

OS/2 hasn't been a player for many, many years. Accept it and move on.

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Re:Uhm, yeah. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-01 04:34 · Score: 0, Troll

It kind of is, because much of cryptology relies on large primes as keys, and if you could easily factor them it would be trivial to break keys (see Distributed.net RC64 etc. of a brute-force method).

Of course, nowadays there are alternates but today it is still of significance.
Re:And don't forget about! by 91degrees · 2003-07-01 04:39 · Score: 0, Troll

NT 3.5 did have a few things going for it that while already fairly tried and tested, not everyone had (unless I'm mistaken, which I very much might be). Things like a journalled file system, prememptive multi tasking and memory protection. There were a few systems that didn't even have long filenames back then.

Not that MS really pioneered anything with these features. They were all well established on many other systems, but they were far from being the last to the party.
"I mean, let's be serious..." by cowbird · 2003-07-01 05:01 · Score: 0, Troll

God, he's a dork.
Re:Typical by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-01 05:06 · Score: 0, Troll

As much as losers like you like to make fun of Bill Gates, he never said that.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/gatesivu.htm
Re:But... by hackrobat · 2003-07-01 05:55 · Score: 0, Troll

(no, this is not a troll. My favorite OS'es are Linux and Mac OS. Just trying to credit where its due)
Oh good you mentioned that! Else you'd've been modded troll, and flamed to death. We're the Slashdot community :-> Be careful.
doesn't matter by garyrich · 2003-07-01 06:15 · Score: 0, Troll

"Yeah and Bill definitely said that."

He didn't need to say it - he did it. He took a processor that could address 1MB and chopped 384k off the top for hardware RAM/ROM use. To this he added an operating system that couldn't address non contiguous memory addresses. It was his design decision and he needs to get over it.

It could have been done other ways and the implicit assumption in the design decision is that 640K is all anyone will ever need.

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Re:No linux astrturfing, huh? by Bandman · 2003-07-01 06:36 · Score: 0, Troll

astroturfing is only the fake zealicy. Most of the people here on slashdot are actually that hyped up about...whatever the fad of the moment is.

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